Metro Journal: Welcome Aboard! Next Stop, Your Stop!

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I did, however, move into my permanent (for now) apartment two weeks ago, and have been slowly settling in with the cats.

I've been commuting most mornings for the past week by taking a bus to the Sunnyvale Caltrain station, and then riding the train. For 5 minutes. To the next stop. Yes, it's slightly silly, but it's less irritating than driving, there's a shuttle from the station to the office, and a bus-only plan isn't very viable, because the VTA bus routes here make even less sense than they do for riders not going to downtown LA. Grid? Ha! Let's just pick two random endpoints, draw some squiggles on the map, and call it a bus route. The "most efficient" bus route to the office, which is less than 10 miles away in the car, is to take a bus west, overshooting the cross-street by a couple miles, then take the bus that I had actually taken while I was in temporary housing. The whole thing would take well over an hour with some waiting in between busses. *shrug* I think I will eventually get a bike, and then I can take the bus west to Stevens Creek Nature Trail and ride about 3 miles north to the office on a trail that has no cars on it (unless the driver has gotten terribly lost). I'll have to work myself up for that.

Anyway, back to Caltrain. It's the commuter heavy rail here in the Bay Area. The trains are pretty nice, everything has been efficient so far (a train will be 5 minutes late, but that is as bad as it's been). The Sunnyvale station is about 1.25 miles from my apartment, and since the bus schedule starts getting sparse before I make it back, I've been walking home most evenings. The weather here is so much cooler than it is around Glendale, so it's not too warm, even moving around, at that time.

Minecraft: RavWorld L-Train

I have now combined my obsessions with public transportation, Minecraft, and yarn into one! This holiday weekend I made an elevated train for the Ravelry Minecraft group server.

Here's the loop, counterclockwise:


The loop, clockwise, at night:


And the first RavWorld L-Train multi-player accident, caught on film!

News: Transpo Round-up

• 
  
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• Most Insane School Drop-off and Pick-up Traffic Rules EVER
• Kitteh sez alternative transportation methods not always as good as they look:
  
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• Holy crap:
  
  see more TDW Geeks
• Hating on the California High-Speed Rail Haters: Get with the program. Like it or not, it's coming.

News: 'N'Stuff

Tranportation:

• An infographic of pedestrian deaths in cities around the world. Atlanta of all places is #1 at nearly 11 deaths per 100,000 residents. LA is only #3. (It's not clear if this is an absolute list of all cities or just a random sampling.)
• Amtrak and Greyhound are both actively adding wi-fi to their buses and train cars.
• Interesting take on the inconsistency and poor training of TSA agents (probably not their fault -- regulations seem to change every 5 minutes and who can keep up?) by someone with large amounts of titanium in his body.
• Some people are pushing for child-free flight options, but I'd be satisfied if parents just had to pass a simple common-sense child control test first.
• And an extremely catchy song about the TSA:
  

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I firmly believe that cats possess a genetic knowledge, and this is one of the items. The call of the can opener (not as used now that most cans of cat food and tuna have those pull-tabs) and fear of the vacuum cleaner (something Pandora refused to have) are two others. This one is in the same vein:

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The Stupid:

• In this article about America's obsession with smartphones, this guy Doug seriously has issues, proving once again that modern technology is affecting the course of natural selection, because I don't see how he would have survived this long without the thing. I fear for his offspring if the battery ever dies.
• And today's stupid criminal, courtesy of Ohio... Also unlikely candidate for prolonging her gene pool.

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Not having a hard time imaging Spoon if I actually baked a turkey...

Metro Journal: Still All Travelin'

In my third post ever, over two years ago, I talked about a garage/mini-junker yard near the Glendale train station which had International Harvester Travelalls in the yard. Last week, I took the Metrolink (I had a pass for free rides that I wanted to use before it expired) and walking to the San Fernando Road 780 stop several blocks away, I passed by the same garage. They'd rearranged the junkers, er, "vintage" vehicles parked there, but I could still see two Travelalls. One was too obscured to get a good picture (I think that's the older one that I show in my earlier post), but the other was parked right by the fence.

Riding the Rails: Day 4 Amtrak's Fault

Well, it was time to go home. I checked the train's time and it had been running about an hour late, but of course, I still needed to get there by the scheduled time in case it had somehow made up an hour. I got up and after I had showered and dressed and almost finished packing, I went out to get some of the continental breakfast, and I promptly got drizzled on. It was damp outside. After breakfast, I asked the front desk to have a cab ready for me. I felt a little bad hauling a cab out just to go about ½ mile to the light rail station, but it was wet and I had the big suitcase to manage.

I got to the light rail station but the line I needed only runs every half hour, so I made sure to have enough time to buffer waiting for the cab, and actually had to wait 15 minutes. It has a good roof, though, so I stayed dry.

There were several people further back in the car having an animated conversation. At one point a male voice said he was going to be gone for a week. A female voice asked, "Are you going to jail?" And she said it like it was serious possibility, but without the shock I would express if I got to the point where I had to ask a friend the same question. He said no. A fare inspector also walked through the cars, the first one I had seen. I didn't pay too much attention, but I don't think anyone got busted.

When I got off at the Amtrak station, there were multiple San Jose police on the platform leading two handcuffed people, a young man and a woman, from the platform and through the underground tunnel to the heavy rail station. They weren't dressed like model citizens, exactly, although I'm pretty sure they weren't getting busted for stealing belts. Otherwise their pants wouldn't be hanging halfway down their hips.

The train was still posted as being an hour behind. The station isn't very large, and I'm not sure if it's old or just made to look old-fashioned. It only had one cramped newsstand/coffee-shop for refreshment. The ceiling was incredibly high, maybe 30 feet (I'm terrible at judging these things), which would have gone a long way to explaining why it was really cold in there. Any heat would have risen straight up.

Even half an hour after I had gotten there and though they hadn't "escorted" anyone else out, there were still a few police officers walking back and forth and multiple cars parked in front of the station. I got a cup of coffee because I was so chilled. Then I noticed the two college students sitting on the bench behind me were knitting. I talked to them a minute and found out they hadn't heard of Ravelry. I was too chilled and not awake enough (I hadn't slept well) so I just sipped my coffee and read.

The train finally showed over an hour late. They were rushing us on, but it was hurry-up-and-wait. Stand in the drizzle waiting for seat assignments. Get on the train and then wait for another 15 minutes for a freight train ahead to clear the tracks.

I had a seatmate, but once the conductor had taken tickets, two buddies of his came from the back of the car and they went to sit on the observation car. After it became clear he wasn't heading back anytime soon, I moved into his window seat and got comfortable.

We had a, um, humorous announcer. "On Amtrak, you pay for the transportation. The thrills are free." As we passed by the San Andreas fault near Gilroy, he reminded us to buy land on the east side of the fault, because when half of California falls into the ocean during The Big One, it will become beach-front property. "Just remember, it's the San Andreas fault, not Amtrak's fault."

I finished the book I had started 2 days before, did some knitting while I watched part of a movie until my laptop battery died (I probably would have watched the whole thing if Vista hadn't pissed me off so much they I had to mess with it before watching the DVD), then decided to doze a little. I spread out over both seats since the guy hadn't come back.

I'm not sure if I really napped any, but I sat up about 4:45, as we were getting to San Luis Obispo. I spent most of the time until my 6PM reservation in the dining car staring out the window. This time I was facing east. The region seemed devoid of human life, although there were occasional farmhouses, an old mine, and later, some big farm monsters. Mostly there were just lots and lots of cows. I even saw cattle scampering for no apparent reason. Who knew? Well, maybe people who watch cows a lot more than I do. I also saw a very large, dusky cat walking under a split-rail fence. It was definitely too large to be a housecat, as it was even bigger than Spoon, but I'm not sure if it was a bobcat or a mountain lion. I think the latter.



In the dining car, I got seated with a young woman and her son. They had started in Eugene, OR. I felt for the woman. That's a really long trip with a young boy. He went through the stages of hyperactive, shy, complaining about the food ("My stomach huuuuurts. The chicken's too spicy." It was an herb marinated chicken, which his mother had pulled the skin off.) More complaining, the eye-rubbing, the sneaking peaks to see if he's getting the reaction he wanted. His mother gently but firmly insisted he eat some chicken or he wouldn't get dessert. He feebly tried the "I don't want dessert" line but it didn't last long. Finally, she asked for some ketchup. He insisted on emptying all five packets onto his plate, and then dipped a piece of chicken in and ate it. Two minutes later, I pointed out that he had stopped using the ketchup. "The chicken's not spicy anymore." He got his ice cream, anyway.

Not much happened the rest of the way. We ended up getting to Union Station only about 15 minutes late. After the slow start from San Jose, I don't remember making any unscheduled stops. I got off, went to the front of the station, called the shuttle company like the reservation told me, waited on hold for 12 minutes, then got an incoming call directly from the driver.

Riding the Rails: Day 3 Am I There Yet?

... Day 3 continued ...

I should say that I was actually really hungry by now. It was late afternoon, I'd basically had a bagel for breakfast and lunch combined, and I'm sure the whole thing was making me cranky, although Olivia could have tried the patience of a saint. The only restaurants I could see near the Winchester Mystery House were big sit-down chains, and I wasn't that desperate.

I got off the bus after a few miles at Saratoga. I had forgotten that the walk from here to Kinokuniya was more like a mile until I had been walking awhile. It was mostly what looked like an older residential area, although the ubiquitous new condos and giant apartment complexes were starting to show up. I knew I was going in the right direction, but still, I couldn't see anything ahead that looked like stores until... There it was! Yay! In a strip mall mainly of Japanese stores.

In square footage, it was definitely bigger than the Los Angeles store, but it wasn't as densely packed with bookshelves. The stationary section looked larger, the manga section definitely seemed larger after I'd circulated a few times, and the crafts section was... smaller? Yes, I traveled around the store multiple times to see if they'd hidden stuff, but there were only about two shelves of knitting/crochet books. I was sorely disappointed. They did have a knitting stitches book I'd been looking for, but they didn't have any amigurumi books. What? Then on yet another circuit, I noticed that they had a small display of amigurumi books, both Japanese and American (English) publications, on a table near the front. It was still only a fraction of the selection in Los Angeles, though, and they didn't have the new Hello Kitty book I had wanted. I suppose I could have asked about it, but I was hungry and tired, and, well, didn't really need to be going out of my way to spend more money.

In addition to the 300 knitting stitches book, I got a book of crochet motifs you work continuously instead of the more common, mind-numbing method of sewing finished pieces together one at a time. I also got an amigurumi book I hadn't seen before. It had a lot of charm-like patterns, and a pattern of a bumblebee man that reminded me of that character on Mexican TV. Bumblebee man has a little lady bug lady friend, too.

I walked along the strip mall and went into a ramen house. It was a hole-in-the-wall, I-wonder-what-grade-this-would-get-if-San-Jose-did-Los-Angeles-style-health-inspection-grades, no-maybe-I-don't-want-to-know joint, but it was pretty crowded and no one keeled over while I was there. I looked at the menu, but all the ramen had pork (there was even a note -- "All ramen dishes have pork") and I don't eat mammals, so I got a boiled chicken salad with kimchi. The kimchi had completely drained my sinuses after about 3 bites. It was hot, but it was good, and the chicken had a good curry sauce on it.

I felt much better with food in my stomach. I was still tired, though, and the sun was beginning to get lower in the sky. I walked back down to the bus stop, which didn't seem so far away this time, and the bus came about 5 minutes later. I rode back to the light rail station where I had caught the first bus, and then waited about 15 minutes for a northbound train.

Riding the Rails: Day 3 Darwin In Action

... Day 3 continued ...

Our guide for the Winchester Mystery House Mansion Tour turned out to be a 12-year-old boy. Ok, I should be talking, since I look a fair deal younger than I am, so I'll give him a little credit and say he's 15, but not a day over. He had the script down, though, and could deliver it at about 120 miles-per-hour. He talked so fast that we ended up having to wait multiple times for the group ahead of us to move, and he wasn't even trying to rush us physically. You could tell as soon as he was asked a non-FAQ and had to go off the script. He stopped the sing-song recitation and started speaking at a more normal speed, interjecting the word "like" every sixth word or so. I don't mean to imply he seemed bored with his job or anything, because I didn't get that impression.

I'm not going to describe the house much, except to say that Sarah Winchester was rather crazy and also should not have been acting as her own architect. Also, if you ever go on the tour, particularly if it's the least bit cool outside, bring something warm to wear. I couldn't figure out why some parts of the house were so chilly, then it dawned on me. A lot of exterior walls had no insulation whatsoever. There was just the one layer of wood boards.

While there were many lovely stained glass windows and a number of oddities, the thing I will never forgot about the tour is Olivia. No, Olivia was not a Winchester, and she's not a ghost at the house. Well, not yet, anyway. Olivia was a little girl, maybe 3 years old, on the tour. I know her name quite well because her parents were forever saying, "Olivia, come here. Don't run ahead, Olivia. Come back here to mommy and daddy, Olivia."

Let me explain two things here. The first one is what I call "Darwin In Action," sort of my personal version of the Darwin Awards. Bus Person Car is one variation. However, I've seen some parents allow if not encourage ("hey, kid, let's jaywalk in the middle of the block here on this busy street after dark!" -- seen it) their young children to attempt to take themselves out of the gene pool. Unfortunately, that would rarely solve the problem, as the parents are generally not placing their own further reproductive abilities at risk. Who knows, maybe there's some "Bad Seed" action here I don't know about it. I may be flip about it, but it would really piss me off if I had to witness something predictably horrible actually coming to fruition.

The second thing: the Winchester Mystery House can be dangerous if a person doesn't pay attention to where they're going. Someone not paying attention can damage something old and irreplaceable, get lost, or trip and fall and seriously injure themselves. This is most definitely not a place where you'd want a 3-year-old darting around out of sight of her parents. Well, unless you were her parents and you somehow weren't too averse to the idea of losing her.

Except that was exactly how Olivia's parents were acting. They were taking turns carrying an infant who was about 12-months old. This presumably would have left the hands of the other parent free to, oh, I don't know, hold on to Olivia. But, no, the kid kept skittering between people without looking where she was going, bumping into them, scaring the hell out of me when I was bumped in the knee not because I thought it was a ghost, but because I was picturing what my prison sentence would be like if I went to the root of the problem and throttled her dumbass parents.

So, while they would be calling out, "Olivia, come back here," in a completely unthreatening, "there aren't really any repercussions if you don't come back here because we're the type of parents who don't believe in really punishing our children, because we're dumbasses who want to raise good-for-nothings with a limitless sense of entitlement or even just total sociopaths, and then we seem bewildered when we end up on a nanny reality TV show," Olivia usually didn't pay much attention, and neither of the parents made an effort to go get her and keep a hold on her. They were also pretty oblivious when the baby they were holding would reach over her parent's shoulder and try to grab at the priceless, earthquake-damaged, "please don't lean on the walls" wallpaper, which was actually within her short little arm's reach. I realize little kids are into everything and it can be easy to lose track sometimes, but that's not really an excuse not to try to keep them out of anything they shouldn't be doing.

Finally, about 50 minutes into the 65-minute tour, Olivia had run ahead of the guide, and we could see her through a glass wall as she went around a corner and just kept on going ahead. At this point the mother told the father, "I'm going to go grab her hand." I would have seriously considered banging my head against the wall if it hadn't been covered in priceless wallpaper.

Somehow, Olivia got out of the house alive, when the house could so easily have added a brand new ghost to its collection. Darwin must have been busy elsewhere.

I really should have put something about "regular child-free tours" in the suggestion box in the gift shop. Instead I bought Brad a snow-globe magnet (I seriously doubt it has actually snowed on the house itself more than about half a dozen times in 125 years) for feeding the fuzzies in my absence. Then I walked back to the catch the same bus that had gotten me there so I could go further west to the San Jose Kinokuniya. I had to wait forever for the bus, and this stop didn't have a bench. Whine.

to be continued some more....

Riding the Rails: Day 3 VTA Fun

I slept like a log, woke up, and took forever to get my butt in gear. I finally made it out the door a few minutes after noon and walked down the dumbass undulating sidewalk to the Karina Station, no shortcuts this time. I bought a VTA day pass for $5 from the machine, but then I had to wait a bit for a southbound Mountain View-Winchester train, as the trains don't run as often on Saturdays. There were two trains to Santa Teresa before mine came.

When I got on, there was a man and his young daughter sitting in front of me. A small, plastic, suction-cup-handed Spiderman hung from the window we shared. I didn't know if it was hers or not, but I thought that was an awesome idea for a random thing to do; buy a bunch of cheap suction-cup toys and stick one on bus and train windows and leave them. I was a little disappointed when the girl pulled it off the window and took it with her when they got off, implying it had been hers all along.

I was even more disappointed when an obnoxious young couple took their seats. The guy said something which I wouldn't have noticed, except the girl started saying, "NOOO-oooh" over and over again. I realized it was the same way I said "No" to Spoon when he was clearly thinking about doing something Bad. (He's pretty transparent.) Two beats, high then a couple steps lower, with a glissando between the two pitches. By the time she had said this half a dozen times without pause, I wanted to start using my Spoon voice back on her. She kept picking at him about one thing or anything, but the real coup de grâce, or should I say, coup de ass, came when she stood up to leave. Thrilled that they were getting off, I was looking with glee at her back moving away, when I realized a full inch of butt crack was staring at me. And we're not talking about a woman who should have been wearing ultra-low-rise jeans in the first place, but seriously, put a goddamned belt on. Now, I know you're thinking you really didn't want to hear this, but I had to see it, so just deal with it.

The train finally got to my stop, which was apparently in the middle of New Condo Land. Then I had to catch the VTA 25 bus west to get to the Winchester Mystery House. Of course, I got to watch one go by kitty corner as soon as I got off the train (just like home!), which meant I had to wait another 20 minutes for the next one. This is one of the reasons I bring reading material with me wherever I go. My brain has the attention span of a 3-year-old, and if I don't have something to keep it busy, it tries to drive me crazy.

The bus came pretty much on time and looked like from the outside pretty much the same size and type as the basic Metro locals. When I got on, though, the internal layout was the same, too, but the seats... they had actual padding! Not foam that had maybe been ¼" thick when new but had been compressed down to ¹⁄₁₆" over time, but at least an inch of foam! The next surprise came a few minutes later. A pre-recorded announcement told the passengers to wait until the bus had come to a complete stop before trying to get out of their seat and go to the door! Crap, you do that on Metro, you're lucky if you get to the door before the stop after yours!

Anyway, it got to my stop, then I walked across I-880 and a couple blocks to the Winchester Mystery House. From my hotel to there was a total travel time of about 2 hours. About a third of that was probably my bad timing where I ended up waiting, but I didn't really mind, because I had brought the book. I bought my Mansion Tour ticket and then waited a couple of minutes for my tour to start.

to be continued...

Riding the Rails: Day 1 Addendum

A couple things I forgot to mention about the train ride up to San Jose:

• Somewhere past Santa Barbara but still in view of the coast, there was a pen with some grazing horses, and, were those llamas? Alpacas? Or was I just looking at them from an odd angle? Their heads looked too small proportionally to be equine, and their necks a little too long. Either way, they were just hanging out with their horses, neither too disturbed by the other.
• My seatmate Jim told me about an incident on his ride down where the train just stopped in the middle of nowhere. No station, nothing. Apparently some asshole had been trying to put the mack on some woman without either noticing or caring that she would rather eat glass than have anything to do with him. Finally she complained to a conductor (I probably would have kneed him in the groin first, but who knows), and they radioed ahead and the police met them, well, in the middle of nowhere, escorting the asshole off the train.

Riding the Rails: Day 2 A Kinda Big Shew

I slept like a rock and didn't wake up until 10:30. As soon as I woke up, though, I knew it: I ached. My back ached from the train and from carrying a lot of weight, particularly once we got to San Jose and I was already too tired to carry my back properly. My head ached, probably because I had not only not eaten for something like 14 hours at that point, but also because the air on the train had been dry and I probably hadn't drunk enough water to make up for it. I had decided against packing an analgesic for some dumbass reason and was regretting it. Ouch. I came to gradually. A hot shower loosened some muscles. A couple of glasses of water helped with the head.

I got ready. I put my flair on my backpack. I decided on the Martial Arts and Crafts t-shirt. I got everything I would need into my backpack and I was off.

While I had paid attention to streets on the way in the cab last night, I hadn't really noticed how the hotel was oriented with respect to the street. Admittedly, it took me about 10 minutes to get out of the parking lot, which adjoined a fitness center, another hotel, and a casino of all things, to the street. The side street the hotel was on had a sidewalk but it had been laid by some assholes who thought they were funnier than they were: it undulated from side to side like a snake.

I made it to the major cross street, which in this area was lined with Silicon Valley-corporate buildings and large empty lots. I decided to cross to the other side of the street where there were some shady trees over the sidewalk, except when I got across... there was no sidewalk. Assholes! Instead of going back and crossing the street or just walking along the grassy areas in front of the office buildings, I decided to keep going up the side street, which had lots of tech offices. And no sidewalks. There was little traffic, though, and my sometimes sketchy memory of the map was that there would be a cross street to 1st and I could get to the Karina station that way. I walked a couple of minutes. Then I really started hoping this wouldn't end up being a cul-de-sac or something. I kept walking and finally there was a regular sidewalk. I finally saw a cross street with Stop sign a little way up. Fortunately, it was a nice day. The sun was a little warm as I was moving around, but there was a cool breeze to make up for it.

I turned left in the direction 1st should be in. While I have a serious knack for getting lost, because I have a lousy internal sense of direction, I have apparently never managed to get permanently lost yet. And, in fact, I did get to 1st. Except I was not on Karina and I realized I had probably gone past it, but I wasn't sure. I just couldn't see a rail platform in either direction, although I could see the tracks going down the middle of the road. That at least was a good sign.

I walked several more long blocks, past ebay and finally saw a platform. Ok, something I've noticed about San Jose is that the crossing lights at major intersections seem to make the most annoying bird-like electronic chirping noises. It had seriously startled me the night before when I was trying to figure out how to get to my hotel. At the intersection I now found myself at, of the three crossing light chirps I heard, they all seemed to be different pitches, all annoying. I mean, it's a good idea, but the actual sound they used in their implementation was just too annoying. Anyway, this was actually the Component station, which means I had overshot Karina by over half a mile. Oh, well. The bag wasn't that heavy and it's not like I couldn't use the exercise. I bought my ticket from the machine, which required practically putting my nose against the screen as the sun was shining directly on it, making it almost unreadable. My train showed several minutes later.

I got off at the Great America station, which in my through-a-fun-house-mirror memory I had thought was several blocks from the convention center. (In my defense, one of the muy annoying things about Google maps is that, when I type "Santa Clara Convention Center," it doesn't show the damned center. It shows all the hotels in its database that match that or mention their proximity on their web sites. I had to guess the convention center's actual location based on address, which is not always easy to do.) I saw this woman in front of me with Ravelry pins on her KCRW messenger bag (oddly like the one I have had from years, except not -- I got mine the first year they offered it. This was probably from a subsequent year) and asked, "Do you know where you're going?" "Yes, right over here." Oh. We were literally directly in front of the convention center entrance. If I had looked up instead of at her bag, I would have seen the sign.

Anyway, into the show's market. I had bought my ticket online and printed out the barcode ticket. Those things are becoming ubiquitous. In I went! I had brought a specific list of projects I needed to find yarn for, and so my eyes scanned mostly for that. The first booth where I purchased something was actual by an importer of Japanese kimono and fabric. My mother loves Japanese fabric and her birthday is coming up, so hopefully she can incorporate it into her quilting. Birthday present, check!

The next purchase was of beautiful hand-made glass buttons I think will go nicely with a cardigan I am going to start Any Day Now.

Now, while I had decided to limit the yarn shopping as much as possible to specific projects, I hadn't really considered the fact that I would see new patterns I wanted. The next purchase was for a nice short-sleeved cardigan with lacy placket. I often don't buy the yarn a pattern is designed for, but I was at the yarn company's booth and one of the suggested yarns was both very pretty and inexpensive.

I eventually stumbled onto WEBS' booth. I love WEBS. I've ordered from them often, both because they have a very large selection, give excellent discounts if you, um, spend enough, um, money, and get some great close-out yarns, which, while not subject to further discounts, are already good deals. They're located in New Hampshire, so obviously they could only bring a small subset of their selection, but that was enough for me. I got some closeout, self-striping Noro Matsuri for one an entrelac sweater I've been trying to find yarn for for ages, and some of WEBS' own line of wool for a felted bag. The woman at the cash register next to me was 11 cents short of the amount needed for the next discount level. "Well, can I just give you 11 cents?" "Oh, I'll just give you the discount! Don't worry about it." Aw, they're nice, too.

One of the things I had been looking for was some self-striping laceweight yarn, preferably a fuzzy mohair type, for the pattern on the cover of this Japanese book I had gotten the last time I was Kinokuniya. I am honestly not exactly sure about what kind of yarn/fiber type/exact weight the recommended yarn is, because the book is, well, in Japanese, and it would be a Japanese brand anyway. (Noro is one of the few Japanese yarn makers that has widespread American distribution.) I found a beautiful, soft, laceweight merino wool yarn, which, while not a fuzzy mohair, was self-striping. It may make the cardigan seem a little airier than the sample, but I'm hoping it will work.

The last thing I got was a pretty polymer clay barrette. I keep losing barrettes. I strongly suspect when I finally move, I will find where the cats have hidden them. Seriously.

At some point after a couple hours, I had left the hall to get a refreshment and put down my bags. I shared a table with two separate groups of people, as the snack area was pretty crowded. One woman, who otherwise looked like a perfectly respectable 50-something lady, whipped out her piggie and holstein cow finger puppets. I guess she takes them around with her because she gets lonely. (Well, in that silly, metaphorical way.) I told her about the Obama and McCain puppets and the turkey puppet I had made. Then I suddenly recalled a pair of gloves I had had as a child. They were knitted in bright primary colors, and each finger was a different color with a little face on the end! I seem to recall they also had little tufts of hair! I think the finger puppet lady and I got the same gleam in our eyes at the same time. Now to find a simple glove pattern, ripe for faces and hair to be embroidered on the finger tips.

It was 5 now and I had made the rounds many times and wasn't seeing anything new to catch my eye. And I was tired. I had planned to meet an on-again-off-again friend I hadn't talked to for a long time, but I had told him I would probably stay until 6, but I called him and he said he could head out now.

After we had dinner and he dropped me off at my hotel, I took out all the stuff.

Yes, that is a box of Girl Scout cookies. They were, um, girling the coat/bag check booth.

Spread out on the floor, I realized I didn't actually buy as much as it had seemed like, and I was rather pleased with both what I did and did not buy. I got yarn for two hard-to-shop for projects, and found another pattern and already got affordable but suitable yarn for it. I brought one of those travel Space Bags with me, and I might be able to fit most if not all into my suitcase after squashing it down. And, um, unzipping the expansion section of the suitcase.

All in all, the show's selection wasn't quite what I expected. There were a lot of small companies bringing their own hand-spun and -dyed yarns. Such a statement is fightin' talk to some yarnies, but I'm just not that big on those yarns. They usually are mostly wool, which, while I don't go out of my way to avoid, do try to find alternatives. Also, with the price of hand-made yarn, sweater quantities cost more than I would usually like to pay, and I have more than enough small quantity yarns in my stash that are suitable for scarves (which I make few of) and other small projects.

That said, I wasn't disappointed with the show at all. I had a really good time, and I'm pleased with what I ended up with. I really enjoyed talking to the people there. I got to see and touch a lot of yarns I had only ever seen online, and even if I didn't buy them there, if a project comes to mind that they click with, I can order them knowing what I'm getting. It was a very nice afternoon.

After I got back to the hotel and settled down, I drew a hot bath. Ahhhhhh....

Riding the Rails: Day 1 Hey Porter

... Day 1 continued ...

We pulled into San Luis Obispo around 5pm. It was a smoke-break length stop, so all the little smokers streamed off the train for their first chance to smoke since, I think, Santa Barbara, which was about 3½ hours back, I believe. The horror! The two teachers two rows back, whose talking had been the only non-stop thing about this train, finally got off.

The car really did start to fill up there. A white-haired man ended up in the seat next to me. He asked how the trip had been, since we were 1 hour and 20 minutes late. I had no idea we were that far behind schedule. The only timepoints I knew were LA and San Jose. If they had announced something about it, I missed it. But, as I said in the previous post, we stopped fairly often and for sometimes rather extended periods. As they were starting to get ready to leave, they did announce that we were that far behind schedule and that they hoped to make up the time the rest of the way, but they did have to deal with some freight traffic. (Um, if they could have gone faster so as not to get behind schedule in the first place, wouldn't they have done that already?)

That's a railroad tie they're working on

I ended up talking to my seat mate Jim the rest of the way to San Jose, just meandering over topics the way you do with a pleasant stranger you will never see again. One thing that's nice about the train is that you can actually converse at a regular volume without straining to hear, something airplane jet engines make almost impossible. He had been visiting childhood friend in San Luis Obispo, where he had grown up. He was going back to Portland to visit his son, then drive back to the small town outside of Seattle where he now lived.

After awhile, I grabbed something to eat for dinner in the "café." Read: mini-convenience store with microwave. I was hungry, though, and the sandwich was edible.

Oh, apropos of nothing, but I simply forgot to mention it earlier... The bathrooms are your standard airplane bathrooms, although some have extra space for a diaper changing table. In the first one I used, the water taps were the kind you had to hold down to keep the water coming, but there was one flow speed: firehose. Seriously, it sprayed all over the place. Especially considering the fact that the train could only carry a finite amount of water, you'd think it would behoove them to control the flow so as not to waste half of it by spraying everything in a 3-foot radius. I figured maybe it was just that one lavatory. Until the same thing happened in the other two I tried during the ride. At least I learned to straighten my arms as much as possible to try to keep my body out of range, although my arms just aren't that long so it was a fruitless effort.

We ended up getting to San Jose about 9:20, 50 minutes behind schedule. I was actually a little impressed that they had managed to make up 30 minutes. As I had mentioned, San Jose Diridon Station (the possible pronunciation puzzled me, but something there called it "DEAR-ih-done," so I'll go with that) handles Amtrak and Caltrain and also has a light rail stop. You have to walk the long around to get to the tunnel that passes under the heavy rail tracks to get to the light rail platform, though. I managed the ticket machine and had to wait about 15 minutes for the train.

The train was about half full, which is somewhat impressive, given the time of night on a Thursday. One of the things that impressed me about these trains, physically, was the bike section. Bikes on the LA light rail lines are really annoying, often because their owners are inconsiderate and the damned things are sometimes positioned so as to block the door on one side. Yes, you got on the train on the other side, but the reason they have doors on both sides is because, well, not all stations have you exit on the same side. Moron. The Santa Clara VTA trains have sections between the regular seating compartments which have a rack on side where about half a dozen cyclists can hang their bikes vertically and then sit right across from them. That's smart.

I got off at the 1st and Metro station. I should have gotten off at the next one, 1st and Katrina, which is a hair closer to the hotel, but before I had left, I had plugged in "Diridon Station to (hotel address) by PT" into Google Maps one more time, and it told me to get off at Metro. When I got off there, I realized that while the overall distance was less, which is what Google Maps was probably optimized for, walking distance was more. And I had only looked at the walking map from the Katrina Station, which I had planned to use the next day to get to the convention center. And hadn't printed out a map. I got lost in the Holiday Inn parking lot across the street (don't ask -- I thought it was a shortcut), then pulled out my cell phone. It had been fully charged in the morning. I had known that there would be no cell phone access on long stretches on the trip and knew that constantly searching for a signal can kill a cell phone battery, somehow those facts had not coalesced in my brain until that moment. Crap. I was pretty sure I had remembered seeing a pay phone at the rail platform and it was an obvious landmark anyway, as I was clearly going to need a cab. Fortunately the phone was working and the phone book was there and intact. The first cab company I called hung up on me because the asshole couldn't hear me the first time I said hello as he was talking, and then when I said "hello" again, he couldn't hear me because he was so impatient he was already saying, "Anyone there?" And then he hung up. Times like that, I totally wish I had a multi-purpose voodoo doll, I swear. The next company heard me just fine, thank you, but said he wouldn't be able to get a cab to me for at least 30 minutes, and then gave me the number I had called the first time. "Yeah, they hung on me." "Well, I can't help you." Apparently not. It was a good thing I had plenty of change with me. Third time was a charm, though. The dispatcher told me 10-15 minutes, but the cab showed up in about 5. He had been on his way to the airport. And even though it was dark, I got to see how he got to the hotel, which jibed with what I now remembered of the map. Yay.

I was tired, it was about 10:30, but the room was comfortable. I turned on my laptop. I had brought the USB cable to charge the phone, but then I remembered I had forgotten to install the driver for the phone. Crap. Fortunately, the hotel has reasonable free wireless, so I got the driver installed and the phone finally charging. It took me awhile to wind down, and then I stayed in bed reading awhile. Finally I could barely keep my eyes open, so I went to sleep...

Riding the Rails: Day 1 Stop'n'Go'n'Stay-Stopped

I had made sure I had almost everything packed the night before. I was hoping to use my smaller suitcase, and while everything would have fit going there, well, no room for yarn when I came back! So, bigger suitcase it was.

I did, of course, miss the 84 bus I had planned to take. I had wanted to get to the station about 45-60 minutes before the train left at 10:15, even though I had already bought my ticket online and wouldn't need to check bags. I just couldn't remember if the 84 still ran every 15 minutes or had started into the once every 30 minutes part of the day. Crap. I waited. It had definitely been at least 20 minutes. I got worried. I probably shouldn't have; even if it was going to be 30 minutes, as long as traffic wasn't awful, I would still get there in plenty of time. The 84 wasn't the fastest way to get there, necessarily, but it had the virtue of stopping several blocks from my home and then stopping right at Union Station, so I wouldn't have to worry about dragging my suitcase between connections. Still, I was beginning to consider calling a cab, or even just going back and getting my car and driving when the bus came. Yay! And even though on paper the trip is supposed to take close to an hour at that time of the morning, we were there in about 45 minutes, so I actually walked into Union Station just after 9:30.

Lobby of Union Station: Impressionist Version!

I had printed out the ticket reservation paper with the barcode on it, but I had a hard time finding the automated machines they told me to scan it on to get my actual tickets. I finally found them beyond the ticketing booths, all the way over next to the first-class entrance, completely hidden from casual view. That was kind of lame. The machines are pretty much the same ones airlines use. At least it read my barcode the first try, too. I have a problem with that sometimes, even though my printer has reasonable print quality. I got my tickets and then headed down the non-first-class entrance to the train platforms. Union Station may have a beautiful faux Art Deco-style lobby, but the tunnel is just ugly, painted concrete. I seem to recall several years ago it was even uglier unpainted concrete, though, so at least that's an improvement.

The Coast Starlight originates at Union Station. Even though they made a PA for all the Coast Starlight passengers to head to the platform, when I got there they hadn't even opened the doors yet. The conductors for each passenger car had started giving out seat assignments, though, although they do it on the fly, so it's a little slow, but it's flexible. I got a window seat on what be the west side of the train, which meant I would get a good view when we were in sight of the ocean. They finally opened the doors and I somehow managed to haul my big-ass suitcase up the narrow staircase and squeeze it into the overhead bin. (I later realized there was a big bookcase-style luggage rack right next to the door, which I hadn't noticed somehow.)

I was in coach class, but man, those seats have serious leg room. More even than when I flew first class. They were about the same width as a first-class seat. I started looking around for a power outlet, which the Amtrak site had said were "limited" in the coach section. I interpreted "limited" to mean "one per several people." In practice it seemed to mean "zero per any number of people." I had plenty of time to look around and could not find a single one. My cheap-ish laptop was good for maybe 2 hours max of DVD watching. I was slightly annoyed.

A woman sitting directly behind me had for a duster-length semi-sheer black sweater over her outfit. The side seams didn't start until about a foot up from the bottom, which meant the side sections were very flowy. It was very attractive, but absolutely impractical for travel, as the panels kept flowing into the armrests of seats along the aisle. This would happen every time she got up to walk somewhere, until she remembered to gather the front together. As the thing was too sheer to provide a great deal of warmth, um, why the hell didn't she just take the thing off, at least when she wasn't in her seat? Behind her were two schoolteachers who talked non-stop. Thank some techno-deity for headphones.

The first view from my window

The train was scheduled to leave at 10:15. At 10:14, according to the platform clock, they closed the doors, and we were moving a minute later. The car I was in was actually very empty. No one had a seatmate unless they were traveling with someone, and most seat pairs were empty altogether. We went out of downtown, then along the Los Angeles Drainage Ditch, then through the Glendale Station (not a stop -- this train doesn't stop all that often, actually. Well, not as scheduled, but as we'll see...) It passed between the Burbank Fry's and the Bob Hope Airport, then a little ways later, it... stopped. For several minutes. Um, ok. This ended up becoming an all-too-familiar situation, at least until we hit San Luis Obispo, which is about the half-way point to San Jose. Sometimes we would be stopped for a really long time (15 minutes or more). Sometimes they would announce a reason (usually waiting for a freight train); sometimes not. sigh

Next stop was Van Nuys. Once we got near the western edge of Los Angeles County, you're in relative-Boonieland. There were even houses with donkeys or horses in the backyard. My lunch "reservation" in the dining car came right about the time we entered Ventura County. Since I consisted of a party of one, they seated me with a couple. They were nice people, but silly kind of in the way people who haven't been together a long time but are comfortable around each other get, but not in a gross, touchy-feely way. They were going up to Santa Barbara for the day. She went often, but he had never been before. "Are there good places to eat there?" "Oh, yes." I hadn't actually been in almost 15 years, although I had lived there almost a year. I don't think it could have lost its general atmosphere in that time.

It turns out the woman worked for Amtrak in some kind of public relations capacity. She said some of the eastern lines had even somehow started adding wi-fi to their cars, and when I remarked on the lack of power outlets in coach, she said that was the number one thing people were requesting. The man kept giving the dining car manager a good-naturedly hard time because we still hadn't been in sight of the ocean. "You said there would be an ocean! Where'd the ocean go?" "We'll start seeing it when we get past Oxnard."

Fortunately we started seeing blue before the lunch was over. (Service was actually extremely slow, and the car was not crowded.) We could see the Channel Islands in the distance We could also see all the oil drilling platforms surrounding the Channel Islands (still a huge controversy, as the northern islands off Ventura and Santa Barbara counties are uninhabited nature preserves). After I got back to my seat, I started taking lovely, blurry pictures.


I was at lunch so I don't remember if Oxnard had been a cough "smoking-break stop." Van Nuys had not been, but Santa Barbara was. I can't say I have all that much sympathy for people on that nicotine leash. At any rate, we were stopped at Santa Barbara for several minutes, and even after they had loaded everyone up and closed the doors... we were still stopped. They announced that we were waiting for some train to move off our track or something. Ok. After we finally left, I spent about an hour looking and my window and reading my book. I decided I would take a nap. Insomnia has been bothering me lately, I think mainly because I lack a regular schedule and don't have regularly-draining days anymore, and I had only managed to fall asleep and stay asleep for about 4 hours the previous night. I put the half-reclining footrest up and slept across the two seats, flopping sides twice. I wouldn't call it deep sleep, but I did feel better. When I heard the conductor say the car would get a lot more crowded now that we were pulling into San Luis Obispo, I decided I might as well sit up.

to be continued...

Riding the Rails: Amtrak Better Know the Way to San Jose

I'm getting ready to take my first non-family-generally-emergency-related trip in over 18 months this week. Yay!

Ostensibly, I'm going up to the San Jose area to check out Stitches West 2009, but that's just an excuse to go somewhere. Firstly, I decided to take the Amtrak Coast Starlight route. It runs from Union Station up to Seattle, with a convenient stop in San Jose. I'd never actually taken Amtrak further than Santa Barbara, and that was a long time ago. Ok, the trip is about 10 hours long each way, but I'll bring my laptop and some DVDs and some books and those multiple unread issues of Scientific American I have piled up. And, according to the Amtrak page,

The scenery along the Coast Starlight route is unsurpassed. The dramatic snow-covered peaks of the Cascade Range and Mount Shasta, lush forests, fertile valleys and long stretches of Pacific Ocean shoreline provide a stunning backdrop for your journey.

So I will probably take lots of blurry pictures from the train.

The San Jose area has what looks like a very convenient system of light rail. I made sure to book a hotel near a rail stop, so I can take the light rail from the Amtrak station up to the hotel, and then take the same line to a stop near the Santa Clara Convention Center, where the Stitches show is taking place.

I get in Thursday night, and I'll check out the show Friday. I haven't decided if I'm going to wear my "Mixed Martial Arts and Crafts" t-shirt or my "I Knit So I Do Not Kill People" shirt (in pink). I will, of course, pack both. I will also carry my newly-finished kitty back pack.¹

Saturday, assuming I can drag my butt out of bed after all that overwhelming excitement, I'm thinking about checking out the Winchester Mystery House, also located in San Jose, although it looks like that will require a bus in addition to the rail. After that, I may check out the San Jose Kinokuniya location, which looks to have a larger selection than the Los Angeles store. The San Francisco store is supposed to be huge, but at over 40 miles from the hotel, it would involve three different rail services and at least one bus. I'm not sure I'm up to that much adventure! Then, on Sunday, it's back down to Union Station.

And I will of course be blogging about it the whole way!

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¹Slightly modified version of the "Punk Rock Backpack" by Heather Barnes.